Occurrence of Late Permian fossil plants in Hong Kong

Abstract

A number of fossil plants collected from the north-eastern shore of the Centre Island, Tolo Harbour, New Territories, Hong Kong have been described. The specimens are preserved in black carbonaceous shale, silty shale and siltstone, which Allen and Stephen (1971) considered to be of Tolo Harbour Formation possibly of the Permian age, although they had no palaeontological evidence for this supposition.

The specimens which form the first report are: Pecopteris (Asterotheca) cf. norinii Halle, Pecopteris sp. (cf. P. lativenosa Halle); Compsopteris cf. contracta Gu et Zhi; Cordaites cf. shenkii Halle; Gigantopterides (cf. Gigantopteris sp.). They belong to the early Upper Permian (P21) Gigantopteris flora commonly seen in the Longtan Formation (formerly known as Longtan Coal Series) in Guangdong Province, China. Since the stratum yielding the above fossil plants is significantly different from the Tolo Harbour Formation in lithology, fossil contents and age, it has been proposed as a new stratigraphic unit- the Centre Island Formation.